Analysis 2023 Midfield & CBAs Analysis

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This is a lengthy post that I didn't want to clog other threads up with, plus it doesn't really pertain to anything about our club except the midfield. So as Paul Roos would say, HERE IT IS!!

I've gone over our complete CBAs from this year to try and find out what often went wrong and who, or what, is to blame. I initially used the AFL app's template for what a "centre clearance" was, but I found they didn't really tell the whole story, as according to AFL or Champion Data or whoever is responsible for recording stats, a handball out of one pack straight into another counts as a "clearance". I believe this is often why we find ourselves looking at games where to the naked eye we've been thumped in clearance work only to read the stats sheet and discover we won that stat on any particular day.

So I came up with my own sort of system, focusing only on centre bounces where the ball was successfully moved from stoppage situation to general play situation. Using this, I gave each centre bounce combination a W (we won the clearance), an L (we lost the clearance) or a D (we drew, as in neither team won an immediate clearance and the ball was thrown up again.) I then distributed points a la the premiership ladder - 1 point for a clearance win, 0.5 points for a drawn stoppage, and no points for a clearance loss. From there it was simply about how many points they 'scored' from their CBAs, to determine their final success rate.

To find out which players, pairings and combinations worked and which ones didn't, I broke them all down into three levels: individuals, duos, and trios.

Most successful individuals based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

1. Angus Sheldrick - 51.67%
2. Chad Warner - 46.13%
3. Luke Parker - 45.24%
4. James Rowbottom - 44.92%
5. Tom Papley - 43.59%
6. Errol Gulden - 41.74%
7. Isaac Heeney - 38.24%
8. Callum Mills - 37.81%

So great news for the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society that is so rampant on this board, right? Well, not exactly... Sheldrick's points are hard to gauge because he only had CBAs in five games, and one of them happened to be the West Coast game, in which the Swans overall won 22(!) centre clearances, so it distorts his overall effectiveness. So I dug a little deeper and found that without the West Coast game, Sheldrick goes from 1st at 51.67% down to 8th at 37.8%. (I repeated this exercise with all of the other mids and none of their percentages changed more either way than 2%.)

I'll also note that even in those centre clearances that we did win in those five games, Sheldrick himself was only equal third in terms of winning the clearances, with five over that period, well behind Rowbottom (11) and Parker (10).

Most successful duos based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
1. Chad Warner & Luke Parker - 49.49%
2. James Rowbottom & Luke Parker - 49.09%
3. Chad Warner & James Rowbottom - 47.06%
4. James Rowbottom & Tom Papley - 46.74%
5. Luke Parker & Tom Papley - 45.07%
6. Errol Gulden & James Rowbottom - 44.9%
7. Callum Mills & Luke Parker - 44.64%
8. Chad Warner & Tom Papley - 42.72%
9. Errol Gulden & Luke Parker - 42.21%
10. James Rowbottom & Callum Mills - 28.92%

Quite obviously there are three names that feature prominently at the top here - that being Parker, Rowbottom & Warner (this will be reinforced later on.)

Perhaps most strikingly is the Mills & Rowbottom number. These two were instrumental in our grand final run last year. They were in our top 3 players in the last few months of 2022 by almost every measure imaginable - Skilton Medal votes, AFLCA coaches votes, player ratings points, even POTY votes on this very board. Our midfield was hardly a triumph last year, but if we want a reason for our midfield going backwards this year, we need look no further than these two becoming our least effective centre bounce pairing.

Out of interest I also wondered how the two fan favourites - Gulden & Warner - faired when paired up at centre bounces, and the result was... underwhelming. At 42.47% they'd just sneak into 9th place if they'd featured together enough this year.

And, for anyone in the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society wondering who their Chosen One worked best with, the answer is a resounding Tom Papley, who he was paired up with seven times for seven centre clearance wins (yes, that's a strike rate of 100%, for the mathematically challenged. I'm not judging.) Next-best for Sheldrick were Gulden (60%) and Rowbottom (58.4%).

Most successful combinations based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
(There were obviously a shit load of combinations throughout the year, including random ones like McInerney, Wicks, Stephens & Roberts all popping in for literally less than five CBAs each all year. So below are only the ten most-used combinations we went with this year, ranked from best to worst.)

1. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (59.23%)
2. Callum Mills, Chad Warner & Luke Parker (59.09%)
3. James Rowbottom, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (55.13%)
4. Chad Warner, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (53.13%)
5. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Tom Papley (51.92%)
-----
6. Errol Gulden, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (46.36%)
7. Callum Mills, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (46.15%)
8. Chad Warner, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (46.08%)
9. Callum Mills, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (42.68%)
10. Errol Gulden, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (39.66%)

First of all, it says a lot about how much we used Luke Parker this year that he features in nine of our ten most-used centre bounce combinations. (20% more than our next mid.)

Second, looks like I have some egg on my face. Three of my gripes all year were with each of Warner, Rowbottom & Parker in the midfield. Warner because I thought he was better suited to the outside, Rowbottom because I thought he was too defensive, and Parker because... well I won't go into that again. Evidently they were getting it done. If not to the level that say a Petracca/Oliver/Viney can get it done, still more so than the rest we've got.

It's also interesting that that trio were number one last year as well, though with a much higher percentage of 72.7%.

Some other less-used combinations that I thought had interesting results:

- Isaac Heeney, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker was our most successful combination of the year, going at 91.67%. Interestingly this trio was also our most successful combination in last year's grand final, being the only ones to produce a strike rate above 50% all game.

- Our three youngest mids (of our main rotation, so excluding Sheldrick, Roberts etc.) in Rowbottom, Warner & Gulden had a positive strike rate of 52.63%.

- Last year's top 3 in the B&F in Mills, Warner & Rowbottom went from a strike rate of 57.1% last year to 40% this year, which would've had them second-lowest if they were featured more. Once again, when you compare to last year it really isn't hard to see why the midfield got worse this season.

- Justin McInerney also appeared in four centre bounces this year for four losses.

Most successful first-touch midfielders based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

All of the above was hard to interpret because there were a lot of centre bounces where players didn't even touch the ball but still got points for being at a centre bounce that proved successful. So I wanted to look a bit more into who was actually contributing most to these successful centre bounces, meaning who had hands on ball the most at these centre bounces.

Using handball receives wasn't a good indicator as a lot of the time the ball went to wingmen or running half backs pushing up, which rendered the starting mids redundant. So I looked at the mids getting first touch on the ball, be it winning a ground ball or roving a ruck's taps.

This is based on % of an individual's CBAs where they won first touch that initiated a successful clearance. It does NOT include first touches that failed to lead to a successful clearance.

1. James Rowbottom (31.9%)
2. Errol Gulden (26.72%)
3. Tom Papley (25.84%)
4. Luke Parker (23%)
5. Chad Warner (18.77%)
6. Isaac Heeney (18.58%)
7. Angus Sheldrick (18.5%)
8. Callum Mills (14.3%)

These both did and didn't surprise me. On the one hand I've always felt like Rowbottom was very good at reading ruck taps and knowing where the ball was going, but it also felt like too often he wasn't even going for the ball. Gulden doing so well in this area also suggests you don't need to be a big-bodied bull to be an effective first-touch midfielder.

At the other end of the spectrum... Mills... brother... I've defended you all year and said you needed to be in the midfield more, and this is how you repay me? In his defence, he was in heavily defensive roles in the second half of the year and similarly to Rowbottom, looked more preoccupied putting body on an opponent than going for the ball a lot. But even then, he was doing this last year and still effectively feeding the ball out. I don't want this post to be a Mills-bashing thing, because I love him and he's a great player. It's just hard not to feel that his lack of impact this year translated to a lack of impact from our midfield overall.

My thoughts:

Have tried to be objective doing this, and all of the above is just data, not my personal belief (for example I am still a massive believer in what the Mills & Rowbottom partnership can be despite the evidence suggesting they stunk it up as a duo this year.)

It's also always going to be a bit murky. All of the above doesn't include centre bounces where free kicks were paid for ruck infringements, or where the ruckman won the ball and cleared it out himself, as in those cases the midfielders played no part in it. But there are other areas it can still be murky. A brilliant play can be undone by one great opposition smother that turns the ball over, or a few of our mids could've done everything right and then one of the others gives away a silly free. So there's a lot of variables that don't make it plain black and white. But I hope all of the above does help illuminate things somewhat.

The below are just my thoughts:

For all the talk of how badly we need a ruck, watching these centre bounces back one after the other really clarifies the things our midfielders do poorly, and I'm not sure a ruckman will make much of a difference until we fix those things our midfielders do:

  • Overrunning the ball (either to win it on the ground or for handball receives)
  • Fumble and double-grab a lot of balls (thus putting ourselves under more pressure)
  • Turn back into traffic / handball back into traffic (thus allowing ourselves to get tackled)
  • Fail to get our arms free in tackles (leading to dead balls and repeat stoppages)

One area where I think a ruckman could make a big difference is how we position and set up. Our mids run back behind the ball almost all the time, as if they're expecting the clearance loss and are getting ready to push back to defence. It means that when we DO win the clearance, we rarely have the players ahead of the ball, meaning so many of our clearances are won out the back of the pack. Going backwards to go forwards means you're not always gaining maximum territory, and a lot of our clearances land around about the 50-60m half forward mark, which is how defences that push up high like Geelong's have killed us again and again. Perhaps a ruck acquisition such as Grundy will give our mids the confidence to hold their ground and maybe even move into some attacking positions, so we can get more clearances out the front of packs.

I think this will be for the coaches to sort out. As for the players...

Watching the clearances all back one after the other makes it so much easier to notice each player's game and particularly the things they get wrong at centre bounces. Each have one particularly glaring flaw that seemed to cause them grief repeatedly.

Gulden - Tries to get onto his preferred kicking foot when the time or space to do so isn't there.
Mills - Frustratingly it's simple skill errors for him. Handballs missing targets, fumbling ground balls etc.
Papley - Tries to be too cute with little taps and stuff when simply taking possession is needed.
Parker - Just can't get the isolation on his opponents that the others can, though this is hardly groundbreaking.
Rowbottom - Too defensive too often, though again, hardly groundbreaking.
Warner - Tries to do too much which gets himself under more pressure.

And finally, Parker...

If the Parker-Rowbottom-Warner combination has been our strongest over the past two seasons, and two of those are on the right side of 25 while the other is on the wrong side of 30, then it becomes really easy to see where Sheldrick fits into the equation, potentially as soon as next year. He reminds me of a young Parker the way he plays and as we phase one out, we can phase the other in.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
 
Brilliant post and well done for spending all that time going through a lot of CBAs for the year.

I wonder how much Mills' injury has effected him. Going from an AA year right down.

I think you are dead on the nose about the defensive nature of our set up which is killing us. Hopefully a better ruckman and mindset will fix this. Allowing Rowbottom to be more offensive and maybe get Gulden that space he needs to find his left
 

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This is a lengthy post that I didn't want to clog other threads up with, plus it doesn't really pertain to anything about our club except the midfield. So as Paul Roos would say, HERE IT IS!!

I've gone over our complete CBAs from this year to try and find out what often went wrong and who, or what, is to blame. I initially used the AFL app's template for what a "centre clearance" was, but I found they didn't really tell the whole story, as according to AFL or Champion Data or whoever is responsible for recording stats, a handball out of one pack straight into another counts as a "clearance". I believe this is often why we find ourselves looking at games where to the naked eye we've been thumped in clearance work only to read the stats sheet and discover we won that stat on any particular day.

So I came up with my own sort of system, focusing only on centre bounces where the ball was successfully moved from stoppage situation to general play situation. Using this, I gave each centre bounce combination a W (we won the clearance), an L (we lost the clearance) or a D (we drew, as in neither team won an immediate clearance and the ball was thrown up again.) I then distributed points a la the premiership ladder - 1 point for a clearance win, 0.5 points for a drawn stoppage, and no points for a clearance loss. From there it was simply about how many points they 'scored' from their CBAs, to determine their final success rate.

To find out which players, pairings and combinations worked and which ones didn't, I broke them all down into three levels: individuals, duos, and trios.

Most successful individuals based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

1. Angus Sheldrick - 51.67%
2. Chad Warner - 46.13%
3. Luke Parker - 45.24%
4. James Rowbottom - 44.92%
5. Tom Papley - 43.59%
6. Errol Gulden - 41.74%
7. Isaac Heeney - 38.24%
8. Callum Mills - 37.81%

So great news for the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society that is so rampant on this board, right? Well, not exactly... Sheldrick's points are hard to gauge because he only had CBAs in five games, and one of them happened to be the West Coast game, in which the Swans overall won 22(!) centre clearances, so it distorts his overall effectiveness. So I dug a little deeper and found that without the West Coast game, Sheldrick goes from 1st at 51.67% down to 8th at 37.8%. (I repeated this exercise with all of the other mids and none of their percentages changed more either way than 2%.)

I'll also note that even in those centre clearances that we did win in those five games, Sheldrick himself was only equal third in terms of winning the clearances, with five over that period, well behind Rowbottom (11) and Parker (10).

Most successful duos based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
1. Chad Warner & Luke Parker - 49.49%
2. James Rowbottom & Luke Parker - 49.09%
3. Chad Warner & James Rowbottom - 47.06%
4. James Rowbottom & Tom Papley - 46.74%
5. Luke Parker & Tom Papley - 45.07%
6. Errol Gulden & James Rowbottom - 44.9%
7. Callum Mills & Luke Parker - 44.64%
8. Chad Warner & Tom Papley - 42.72%
9. Errol Gulden & Luke Parker - 42.21%
10. James Rowbottom & Callum Mills - 28.92%

Quite obviously there are three names that feature prominently at the top here - that being Parker, Rowbottom & Warner (this will be reinforced later on.)

Perhaps most strikingly is the Mills & Rowbottom number. These two were instrumental in our grand final run last year. They were in our top 3 players in the last few months of 2022 by almost every measure imaginable - Skilton Medal votes, AFLCA coaches votes, player ratings points, even POTY votes on this very board. Our midfield was hardly a triumph last year, but if we want a reason for our midfield going backwards this year, we need look no further than these two becoming our least effective centre bounce pairing.

Out of interest I also wondered how the two fan favourites - Gulden & Warner - faired when paired up at centre bounces, and the result was... underwhelming. At 42.47% they'd just sneak into 9th place if they'd featured together enough this year.

And, for anyone in the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society wondering who their Chosen One worked best with, the answer is a resounding Tom Papley, who he was paired up with seven times for seven centre clearance wins (yes, that's a strike rate of 100%, for the mathematically challenged. I'm not judging.) Next-best for Sheldrick were Gulden (60%) and Rowbottom (58.4%).

Most successful combinations based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
(There were obviously a s**t load of combinations throughout the year, including random ones like McInerney, Wicks, Stephens & Roberts all popping in for literally less than five CBAs each all year. So below are only the ten most-used combinations we went with this year, ranked from best to worst.)

1. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (59.23%)
2. Callum Mills, Chad Warner & Luke Parker (59.09%)
3. James Rowbottom, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (55.13%)
4. Chad Warner, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (53.13%)
5. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Tom Papley (51.92%)
-----
6. Errol Gulden, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (46.36%)
7. Callum Mills, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (46.15%)
8. Chad Warner, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (46.08%)
9. Callum Mills, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (42.68%)
10. Errol Gulden, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (39.66%)

First of all, it says a lot about how much we used Luke Parker this year that he features in nine of our ten most-used centre bounce combinations. (20% more than our next mid.)

Second, looks like I have some egg on my face. Three of my gripes all year were with each of Warner, Rowbottom & Parker in the midfield. Warner because I thought he was better suited to the outside, Rowbottom because I thought he was too defensive, and Parker because... well I won't go into that again. Evidently they were getting it done. If not to the level that say a Petracca/Oliver/Viney can get it done, still more so than the rest we've got.

It's also interesting that that trio were number one last year as well, though with a much higher percentage of 72.7%.

Some other less-used combinations that I thought had interesting results:

- Isaac Heeney, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker was our most successful combination of the year, going at 91.67%. Interestingly this trio was also our most successful combination in last year's grand final, being the only ones to produce a strike rate above 50% all game.

- Our three youngest mids (of our main rotation, so excluding Sheldrick, Roberts etc.) in Rowbottom, Warner & Gulden had a positive strike rate of 52.63%.

- Last year's top 3 in the B&F in Mills, Warner & Rowbottom went from a strike rate of 57.1% last year to 40% this year, which would've had them second-lowest if they were featured more. Once again, when you compare to last year it really isn't hard to see why the midfield got worse this season.

- Justin McInerney also appeared in four centre bounces this year for four losses.

Most successful first-touch midfielders based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

All of the above was hard to interpret because there were a lot of centre bounces where players didn't even touch the ball but still got points for being at a centre bounce that proved successful. So I wanted to look a bit more into who was actually contributing most to these successful centre bounces, meaning who had hands on ball the most at these centre bounces.

Using handball receives wasn't a good indicator as a lot of the time the ball went to wingmen or running half backs pushing up, which rendered the starting mids redundant. So I looked at the mids getting first touch on the ball, be it winning a ground ball or roving a ruck's taps.

This is based on % of an individual's CBAs where they won first touch that initiated a successful clearance. It does NOT include first touches that failed to lead to a successful clearance.

1. James Rowbottom (31.9%)
2. Errol Gulden (26.72%)
3. Tom Papley (25.84%)
4. Luke Parker (23%)
5. Chad Warner (18.77%)
6. Isaac Heeney (18.58%)
7. Angus Sheldrick (18.5%)
8. Callum Mills (14.3%)

These both did and didn't surprise me. On the one hand I've always felt like Rowbottom was very good at reading ruck taps and knowing where the ball was going, but it also felt like too often he wasn't even going for the ball. Gulden doing so well in this area also suggests you don't need to be a big-bodied bull to be an effective first-touch midfielder.

At the other end of the spectrum... Mills... brother... I've defended you all year and said you needed to be in the midfield more, and this is how you repay me? In his defence, he was in heavily defensive roles in the second half of the year and similarly to Rowbottom, looked more preoccupied putting body on an opponent than going for the ball a lot. But even then, he was doing this last year and still effectively feeding the ball out. I don't want this post to be a Mills-bashing thing, because I love him and he's a great player. It's just hard not to feel that his lack of impact this year translated to a lack of impact from our midfield overall.

My thoughts:

Have tried to be objective doing this, and all of the above is just data, not my personal belief (for example I am still a massive believer in what the Mills & Rowbottom partnership can be despite the evidence suggesting they stunk it up as a duo this year.)

It's also always going to be a bit murky. All of the above doesn't include centre bounces where free kicks were paid for ruck infringements, or where the ruckman won the ball and cleared it out himself, as in those cases the midfielders played no part in it. But there are other areas it can still be murky. A brilliant play can be undone by one great opposition smother that turns the ball over, or a few of our mids could've done everything right and then one of the others gives away a silly free. So there's a lot of variables that don't make it plain black and white. But I hope all of the above does help illuminate things somewhat.

The below are just my thoughts:

For all the talk of how badly we need a ruck, watching these centre bounces back one after the other really clarifies the things our midfielders do poorly, and I'm not sure a ruckman will make much of a difference until we fix those things our midfielders do:

  • Overrunning the ball (either to win it on the ground or for handball receives)
  • Fumble and double-grab a lot of balls (thus putting ourselves under more pressure)
  • Turn back into traffic / handball back into traffic (thus allowing ourselves to get tackled)
  • Fail to get our arms free in tackles (leading to dead balls and repeat stoppages)

One area where I think a ruckman could make a big difference is how we position and set up. Our mids run back behind the ball almost all the time, as if they're expecting the clearance loss and are getting ready to push back to defence. It means that when we DO win the clearance, we rarely have the players ahead of the ball, meaning so many of our clearances are won out the back of the pack. Going backwards to go forwards means you're not always gaining maximum territory, and a lot of our clearances land around about the 50-60m half forward mark, which is how defences that push up high like Geelong's have killed us again and again. Perhaps a ruck acquisition such as Grundy will give our mids the confidence to hold their ground and maybe even move into some attacking positions, so we can get more clearances out the front of packs.

I think this will be for the coaches to sort out. As for the players...

Watching the clearances all back one after the other makes it so much easier to notice each player's game and particularly the things they get wrong at centre bounces. Each have one particularly glaring flaw that seemed to cause them grief repeatedly.

Gulden - Tries to get onto his preferred kicking foot when the time or space to do so isn't there.
Mills - Frustratingly it's simple skill errors for him. Handballs missing targets, fumbling ground balls etc.
Papley - Tries to be too cute with little taps and stuff when simply taking possession is needed.
Parker - Just can't get the isolation on his opponents that the others can, though this is hardly groundbreaking.
Rowbottom - Too defensive too often, though again, hardly groundbreaking.
Warner - Tries to do too much which gets himself under more pressure.

And finally, Parker...

If the Parker-Rowbottom-Warner combination has been our strongest over the past two seasons, and two of those are on the right side of 25 while the other is on the wrong side of 30, then it becomes really easy to see where Sheldrick fits into the equation, potentially as soon as next year. He reminds me of a young Parker the way he plays and as we phase one out, we can phase the other in.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
Superb stuff Caesar. I wonder if the players and coaches have put in this much effort.
I also wonder if both the hand and Achilles problems have played havoc with Mills' ability to handle the ball cleanly.
I remember watching Rowbottom in his early days in the NEAFL really attacking the ball in the pack and would love to see that again.
Thanks.
 
This is a lengthy post that I didn't want to clog other threads up with, plus it doesn't really pertain to anything about our club except the midfield. So as Paul Roos would say, HERE IT IS!!

I've gone over our complete CBAs from this year to try and find out what often went wrong and who, or what, is to blame. I initially used the AFL app's template for what a "centre clearance" was, but I found they didn't really tell the whole story, as according to AFL or Champion Data or whoever is responsible for recording stats, a handball out of one pack straight into another counts as a "clearance". I believe this is often why we find ourselves looking at games where to the naked eye we've been thumped in clearance work only to read the stats sheet and discover we won that stat on any particular day.

So I came up with my own sort of system, focusing only on centre bounces where the ball was successfully moved from stoppage situation to general play situation. Using this, I gave each centre bounce combination a W (we won the clearance), an L (we lost the clearance) or a D (we drew, as in neither team won an immediate clearance and the ball was thrown up again.) I then distributed points a la the premiership ladder - 1 point for a clearance win, 0.5 points for a drawn stoppage, and no points for a clearance loss. From there it was simply about how many points they 'scored' from their CBAs, to determine their final success rate.

To find out which players, pairings and combinations worked and which ones didn't, I broke them all down into three levels: individuals, duos, and trios.

Most successful individuals based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

1. Angus Sheldrick - 51.67%
2. Chad Warner - 46.13%
3. Luke Parker - 45.24%
4. James Rowbottom - 44.92%
5. Tom Papley - 43.59%
6. Errol Gulden - 41.74%
7. Isaac Heeney - 38.24%
8. Callum Mills - 37.81%

So great news for the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society that is so rampant on this board, right? Well, not exactly... Sheldrick's points are hard to gauge because he only had CBAs in five games, and one of them happened to be the West Coast game, in which the Swans overall won 22(!) centre clearances, so it distorts his overall effectiveness. So I dug a little deeper and found that without the West Coast game, Sheldrick goes from 1st at 51.67% down to 8th at 37.8%. (I repeated this exercise with all of the other mids and none of their percentages changed more either way than 2%.)

I'll also note that even in those centre clearances that we did win in those five games, Sheldrick himself was only equal third in terms of winning the clearances, with five over that period, well behind Rowbottom (11) and Parker (10).

Most successful duos based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
1. Chad Warner & Luke Parker - 49.49%
2. James Rowbottom & Luke Parker - 49.09%
3. Chad Warner & James Rowbottom - 47.06%
4. James Rowbottom & Tom Papley - 46.74%
5. Luke Parker & Tom Papley - 45.07%
6. Errol Gulden & James Rowbottom - 44.9%
7. Callum Mills & Luke Parker - 44.64%
8. Chad Warner & Tom Papley - 42.72%
9. Errol Gulden & Luke Parker - 42.21%
10. James Rowbottom & Callum Mills - 28.92%

Quite obviously there are three names that feature prominently at the top here - that being Parker, Rowbottom & Warner (this will be reinforced later on.)

Perhaps most strikingly is the Mills & Rowbottom number. These two were instrumental in our grand final run last year. They were in our top 3 players in the last few months of 2022 by almost every measure imaginable - Skilton Medal votes, AFLCA coaches votes, player ratings points, even POTY votes on this very board. Our midfield was hardly a triumph last year, but if we want a reason for our midfield going backwards this year, we need look no further than these two becoming our least effective centre bounce pairing.

Out of interest I also wondered how the two fan favourites - Gulden & Warner - faired when paired up at centre bounces, and the result was... underwhelming. At 42.47% they'd just sneak into 9th place if they'd featured together enough this year.

And, for anyone in the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society wondering who their Chosen One worked best with, the answer is a resounding Tom Papley, who he was paired up with seven times for seven centre clearance wins (yes, that's a strike rate of 100%, for the mathematically challenged. I'm not judging.) Next-best for Sheldrick were Gulden (60%) and Rowbottom (58.4%).

Most successful combinations based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
(There were obviously a s**t load of combinations throughout the year, including random ones like McInerney, Wicks, Stephens & Roberts all popping in for literally less than five CBAs each all year. So below are only the ten most-used combinations we went with this year, ranked from best to worst.)

1. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (59.23%)
2. Callum Mills, Chad Warner & Luke Parker (59.09%)
3. James Rowbottom, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (55.13%)
4. Chad Warner, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (53.13%)
5. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Tom Papley (51.92%)
-----
6. Errol Gulden, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (46.36%)
7. Callum Mills, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (46.15%)
8. Chad Warner, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (46.08%)
9. Callum Mills, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (42.68%)
10. Errol Gulden, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (39.66%)

First of all, it says a lot about how much we used Luke Parker this year that he features in nine of our ten most-used centre bounce combinations. (20% more than our next mid.)

Second, looks like I have some egg on my face. Three of my gripes all year were with each of Warner, Rowbottom & Parker in the midfield. Warner because I thought he was better suited to the outside, Rowbottom because I thought he was too defensive, and Parker because... well I won't go into that again. Evidently they were getting it done. If not to the level that say a Petracca/Oliver/Viney can get it done, still more so than the rest we've got.

It's also interesting that that trio were number one last year as well, though with a much higher percentage of 72.7%.

Some other less-used combinations that I thought had interesting results:

- Isaac Heeney, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker was our most successful combination of the year, going at 91.67%. Interestingly this trio was also our most successful combination in last year's grand final, being the only ones to produce a strike rate above 50% all game.

- Our three youngest mids (of our main rotation, so excluding Sheldrick, Roberts etc.) in Rowbottom, Warner & Gulden had a positive strike rate of 52.63%.

- Last year's top 3 in the B&F in Mills, Warner & Rowbottom went from a strike rate of 57.1% last year to 40% this year, which would've had them second-lowest if they were featured more. Once again, when you compare to last year it really isn't hard to see why the midfield got worse this season.

- Justin McInerney also appeared in four centre bounces this year for four losses.

Most successful first-touch midfielders based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

All of the above was hard to interpret because there were a lot of centre bounces where players didn't even touch the ball but still got points for being at a centre bounce that proved successful. So I wanted to look a bit more into who was actually contributing most to these successful centre bounces, meaning who had hands on ball the most at these centre bounces.

Using handball receives wasn't a good indicator as a lot of the time the ball went to wingmen or running half backs pushing up, which rendered the starting mids redundant. So I looked at the mids getting first touch on the ball, be it winning a ground ball or roving a ruck's taps.

This is based on % of an individual's CBAs where they won first touch that initiated a successful clearance. It does NOT include first touches that failed to lead to a successful clearance.

1. James Rowbottom (31.9%)
2. Errol Gulden (26.72%)
3. Tom Papley (25.84%)
4. Luke Parker (23%)
5. Chad Warner (18.77%)
6. Isaac Heeney (18.58%)
7. Angus Sheldrick (18.5%)
8. Callum Mills (14.3%)

These both did and didn't surprise me. On the one hand I've always felt like Rowbottom was very good at reading ruck taps and knowing where the ball was going, but it also felt like too often he wasn't even going for the ball. Gulden doing so well in this area also suggests you don't need to be a big-bodied bull to be an effective first-touch midfielder.

At the other end of the spectrum... Mills... brother... I've defended you all year and said you needed to be in the midfield more, and this is how you repay me? In his defence, he was in heavily defensive roles in the second half of the year and similarly to Rowbottom, looked more preoccupied putting body on an opponent than going for the ball a lot. But even then, he was doing this last year and still effectively feeding the ball out. I don't want this post to be a Mills-bashing thing, because I love him and he's a great player. It's just hard not to feel that his lack of impact this year translated to a lack of impact from our midfield overall.

My thoughts:

Have tried to be objective doing this, and all of the above is just data, not my personal belief (for example I am still a massive believer in what the Mills & Rowbottom partnership can be despite the evidence suggesting they stunk it up as a duo this year.)

It's also always going to be a bit murky. All of the above doesn't include centre bounces where free kicks were paid for ruck infringements, or where the ruckman won the ball and cleared it out himself, as in those cases the midfielders played no part in it. But there are other areas it can still be murky. A brilliant play can be undone by one great opposition smother that turns the ball over, or a few of our mids could've done everything right and then one of the others gives away a silly free. So there's a lot of variables that don't make it plain black and white. But I hope all of the above does help illuminate things somewhat.

The below are just my thoughts:

For all the talk of how badly we need a ruck, watching these centre bounces back one after the other really clarifies the things our midfielders do poorly, and I'm not sure a ruckman will make much of a difference until we fix those things our midfielders do:

  • Overrunning the ball (either to win it on the ground or for handball receives)
  • Fumble and double-grab a lot of balls (thus putting ourselves under more pressure)
  • Turn back into traffic / handball back into traffic (thus allowing ourselves to get tackled)
  • Fail to get our arms free in tackles (leading to dead balls and repeat stoppages)

One area where I think a ruckman could make a big difference is how we position and set up. Our mids run back behind the ball almost all the time, as if they're expecting the clearance loss and are getting ready to push back to defence. It means that when we DO win the clearance, we rarely have the players ahead of the ball, meaning so many of our clearances are won out the back of the pack. Going backwards to go forwards means you're not always gaining maximum territory, and a lot of our clearances land around about the 50-60m half forward mark, which is how defences that push up high like Geelong's have killed us again and again. Perhaps a ruck acquisition such as Grundy will give our mids the confidence to hold their ground and maybe even move into some attacking positions, so we can get more clearances out the front of packs.

I think this will be for the coaches to sort out. As for the players...

Watching the clearances all back one after the other makes it so much easier to notice each player's game and particularly the things they get wrong at centre bounces. Each have one particularly glaring flaw that seemed to cause them grief repeatedly.

Gulden - Tries to get onto his preferred kicking foot when the time or space to do so isn't there.
Mills - Frustratingly it's simple skill errors for him. Handballs missing targets, fumbling ground balls etc.
Papley - Tries to be too cute with little taps and stuff when simply taking possession is needed.
Parker - Just can't get the isolation on his opponents that the others can, though this is hardly groundbreaking.
Rowbottom - Too defensive too often, though again, hardly groundbreaking.
Warner - Tries to do too much which gets himself under more pressure.

And finally, Parker...

If the Parker-Rowbottom-Warner combination has been our strongest over the past two seasons, and two of those are on the right side of 25 while the other is on the wrong side of 30, then it becomes really easy to see where Sheldrick fits into the equation, potentially as soon as next year. He reminds me of a young Parker the way he plays and as we phase one out, we can phase the other in.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
First of all great work. And respect for investing so much time and attention. It's obvious a great deal of thought and effort went into this.

One thing that I think makes 2023 a challenging year to analyse is that Mills was certainly carrying something this year. It was evident through watching our games and the stats tell the story. If we were to compare his 2023 output with 2022 I'm sure Mills would feature almost as prominently as Parker and would certainly be top 3 in the individual rankings. *I'm certainly not putting my hand up to review 2022, nor suggesting it should be done.

The other thing I'd mention is that I thought Rowbottom had a poor year, and was not winning enough ball or attacking enough. I reflect back and wonder how much of that had to do with the fact that Rowbottom had to take on additional defensive responsibilities to cover for Mills. In hindsight, rather than underperforming. I feel that Rowbottom may have had to sacrifice his game in the interests of the midfield/team.

I think the most rounded set of stats is the trio stats. For me, it's the composition of the group that says alot about whether they win the clearance and also, who within the group is best placed to win the clearance. I'll elaborate below:

The main thing that stood out to me above all else is Luke Parker. He sets the stage to enable others to play their role. And if we'd lost Parker, the stats / rankings would look completely different, and would definitely be poorer.

Parker featured in the top 4 spots in the trio rankings. With 5th place being held/led by Rowbottom. Mills didn't crack the top 10 without either Parker or Rowbottom as part of the trio. Which illustrates him being given more of a supporting role.

Looking at the trio stats, it's almost as if Rowbottom and Mills were used interchangeably without a significant difference in outcomes.

The other thing that stood out, but was not at all surprising was that Parker, Rowbottom, Mills combo was 9th at 43%. Too much overlap in that ven diagram, too one-dimensional/defensive and not enough flair/attack for that combo to work.

I would be interested in the number of CBAs for each of the stats listed... for duos/trios where there are few data points, the results are likely to be more volatile. Particularly if we see those combinations primarily against poorer teams / midfields.
 
This is a lengthy post that I didn't want to clog other threads up with, plus it doesn't really pertain to anything about our club except the midfield. So as Paul Roos would say, HERE IT IS!!

I've gone over our complete CBAs from this year to try and find out what often went wrong and who, or what, is to blame. I initially used the AFL app's template for what a "centre clearance" was, but I found they didn't really tell the whole story, as according to AFL or Champion Data or whoever is responsible for recording stats, a handball out of one pack straight into another counts as a "clearance". I believe this is often why we find ourselves looking at games where to the naked eye we've been thumped in clearance work only to read the stats sheet and discover we won that stat on any particular day.

So I came up with my own sort of system, focusing only on centre bounces where the ball was successfully moved from stoppage situation to general play situation. Using this, I gave each centre bounce combination a W (we won the clearance), an L (we lost the clearance) or a D (we drew, as in neither team won an immediate clearance and the ball was thrown up again.) I then distributed points a la the premiership ladder - 1 point for a clearance win, 0.5 points for a drawn stoppage, and no points for a clearance loss. From there it was simply about how many points they 'scored' from their CBAs, to determine their final success rate.

To find out which players, pairings and combinations worked and which ones didn't, I broke them all down into three levels: individuals, duos, and trios.

Most successful individuals based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

1. Angus Sheldrick - 51.67%
2. Chad Warner - 46.13%
3. Luke Parker - 45.24%
4. James Rowbottom - 44.92%
5. Tom Papley - 43.59%
6. Errol Gulden - 41.74%
7. Isaac Heeney - 38.24%
8. Callum Mills - 37.81%

So great news for the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society that is so rampant on this board, right? Well, not exactly... Sheldrick's points are hard to gauge because he only had CBAs in five games, and one of them happened to be the West Coast game, in which the Swans overall won 22(!) centre clearances, so it distorts his overall effectiveness. So I dug a little deeper and found that without the West Coast game, Sheldrick goes from 1st at 51.67% down to 8th at 37.8%. (I repeated this exercise with all of the other mids and none of their percentages changed more either way than 2%.)

I'll also note that even in those centre clearances that we did win in those five games, Sheldrick himself was only equal third in terms of winning the clearances, with five over that period, well behind Rowbottom (11) and Parker (10).

Most successful duos based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
1. Chad Warner & Luke Parker - 49.49%
2. James Rowbottom & Luke Parker - 49.09%
3. Chad Warner & James Rowbottom - 47.06%
4. James Rowbottom & Tom Papley - 46.74%
5. Luke Parker & Tom Papley - 45.07%
6. Errol Gulden & James Rowbottom - 44.9%
7. Callum Mills & Luke Parker - 44.64%
8. Chad Warner & Tom Papley - 42.72%
9. Errol Gulden & Luke Parker - 42.21%
10. James Rowbottom & Callum Mills - 28.92%

Quite obviously there are three names that feature prominently at the top here - that being Parker, Rowbottom & Warner (this will be reinforced later on.)

Perhaps most strikingly is the Mills & Rowbottom number. These two were instrumental in our grand final run last year. They were in our top 3 players in the last few months of 2022 by almost every measure imaginable - Skilton Medal votes, AFLCA coaches votes, player ratings points, even POTY votes on this very board. Our midfield was hardly a triumph last year, but if we want a reason for our midfield going backwards this year, we need look no further than these two becoming our least effective centre bounce pairing.

Out of interest I also wondered how the two fan favourites - Gulden & Warner - faired when paired up at centre bounces, and the result was... underwhelming. At 42.47% they'd just sneak into 9th place if they'd featured together enough this year.

And, for anyone in the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society wondering who their Chosen One worked best with, the answer is a resounding Tom Papley, who he was paired up with seven times for seven centre clearance wins (yes, that's a strike rate of 100%, for the mathematically challenged. I'm not judging.) Next-best for Sheldrick were Gulden (60%) and Rowbottom (58.4%).

Most successful combinations based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
(There were obviously a s**t load of combinations throughout the year, including random ones like McInerney, Wicks, Stephens & Roberts all popping in for literally less than five CBAs each all year. So below are only the ten most-used combinations we went with this year, ranked from best to worst.)

1. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (59.23%)
2. Callum Mills, Chad Warner & Luke Parker (59.09%)
3. James Rowbottom, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (55.13%)
4. Chad Warner, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (53.13%)
5. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Tom Papley (51.92%)
-----
6. Errol Gulden, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (46.36%)
7. Callum Mills, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (46.15%)
8. Chad Warner, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (46.08%)
9. Callum Mills, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (42.68%)
10. Errol Gulden, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (39.66%)

First of all, it says a lot about how much we used Luke Parker this year that he features in nine of our ten most-used centre bounce combinations. (20% more than our next mid.)

Second, looks like I have some egg on my face. Three of my gripes all year were with each of Warner, Rowbottom & Parker in the midfield. Warner because I thought he was better suited to the outside, Rowbottom because I thought he was too defensive, and Parker because... well I won't go into that again. Evidently they were getting it done. If not to the level that say a Petracca/Oliver/Viney can get it done, still more so than the rest we've got.

It's also interesting that that trio were number one last year as well, though with a much higher percentage of 72.7%.

Some other less-used combinations that I thought had interesting results:

- Isaac Heeney, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker was our most successful combination of the year, going at 91.67%. Interestingly this trio was also our most successful combination in last year's grand final, being the only ones to produce a strike rate above 50% all game.

- Our three youngest mids (of our main rotation, so excluding Sheldrick, Roberts etc.) in Rowbottom, Warner & Gulden had a positive strike rate of 52.63%.

- Last year's top 3 in the B&F in Mills, Warner & Rowbottom went from a strike rate of 57.1% last year to 40% this year, which would've had them second-lowest if they were featured more. Once again, when you compare to last year it really isn't hard to see why the midfield got worse this season.

- Justin McInerney also appeared in four centre bounces this year for four losses.

Most successful first-touch midfielders based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

All of the above was hard to interpret because there were a lot of centre bounces where players didn't even touch the ball but still got points for being at a centre bounce that proved successful. So I wanted to look a bit more into who was actually contributing most to these successful centre bounces, meaning who had hands on ball the most at these centre bounces.

Using handball receives wasn't a good indicator as a lot of the time the ball went to wingmen or running half backs pushing up, which rendered the starting mids redundant. So I looked at the mids getting first touch on the ball, be it winning a ground ball or roving a ruck's taps.

This is based on % of an individual's CBAs where they won first touch that initiated a successful clearance. It does NOT include first touches that failed to lead to a successful clearance.

1. James Rowbottom (31.9%)
2. Errol Gulden (26.72%)
3. Tom Papley (25.84%)
4. Luke Parker (23%)
5. Chad Warner (18.77%)
6. Isaac Heeney (18.58%)
7. Angus Sheldrick (18.5%)
8. Callum Mills (14.3%)

These both did and didn't surprise me. On the one hand I've always felt like Rowbottom was very good at reading ruck taps and knowing where the ball was going, but it also felt like too often he wasn't even going for the ball. Gulden doing so well in this area also suggests you don't need to be a big-bodied bull to be an effective first-touch midfielder.

At the other end of the spectrum... Mills... brother... I've defended you all year and said you needed to be in the midfield more, and this is how you repay me? In his defence, he was in heavily defensive roles in the second half of the year and similarly to Rowbottom, looked more preoccupied putting body on an opponent than going for the ball a lot. But even then, he was doing this last year and still effectively feeding the ball out. I don't want this post to be a Mills-bashing thing, because I love him and he's a great player. It's just hard not to feel that his lack of impact this year translated to a lack of impact from our midfield overall.

My thoughts:

Have tried to be objective doing this, and all of the above is just data, not my personal belief (for example I am still a massive believer in what the Mills & Rowbottom partnership can be despite the evidence suggesting they stunk it up as a duo this year.)

It's also always going to be a bit murky. All of the above doesn't include centre bounces where free kicks were paid for ruck infringements, or where the ruckman won the ball and cleared it out himself, as in those cases the midfielders played no part in it. But there are other areas it can still be murky. A brilliant play can be undone by one great opposition smother that turns the ball over, or a few of our mids could've done everything right and then one of the others gives away a silly free. So there's a lot of variables that don't make it plain black and white. But I hope all of the above does help illuminate things somewhat.

The below are just my thoughts:

For all the talk of how badly we need a ruck, watching these centre bounces back one after the other really clarifies the things our midfielders do poorly, and I'm not sure a ruckman will make much of a difference until we fix those things our midfielders do:

  • Overrunning the ball (either to win it on the ground or for handball receives)
  • Fumble and double-grab a lot of balls (thus putting ourselves under more pressure)
  • Turn back into traffic / handball back into traffic (thus allowing ourselves to get tackled)
  • Fail to get our arms free in tackles (leading to dead balls and repeat stoppages)

One area where I think a ruckman could make a big difference is how we position and set up. Our mids run back behind the ball almost all the time, as if they're expecting the clearance loss and are getting ready to push back to defence. It means that when we DO win the clearance, we rarely have the players ahead of the ball, meaning so many of our clearances are won out the back of the pack. Going backwards to go forwards means you're not always gaining maximum territory, and a lot of our clearances land around about the 50-60m half forward mark, which is how defences that push up high like Geelong's have killed us again and again. Perhaps a ruck acquisition such as Grundy will give our mids the confidence to hold their ground and maybe even move into some attacking positions, so we can get more clearances out the front of packs.

I think this will be for the coaches to sort out. As for the players...

Watching the clearances all back one after the other makes it so much easier to notice each player's game and particularly the things they get wrong at centre bounces. Each have one particularly glaring flaw that seemed to cause them grief repeatedly.

Gulden - Tries to get onto his preferred kicking foot when the time or space to do so isn't there.
Mills - Frustratingly it's simple skill errors for him. Handballs missing targets, fumbling ground balls etc.
Papley - Tries to be too cute with little taps and stuff when simply taking possession is needed.
Parker - Just can't get the isolation on his opponents that the others can, though this is hardly groundbreaking.
Rowbottom - Too defensive too often, though again, hardly groundbreaking.
Warner - Tries to do too much which gets himself under more pressure.

And finally, Parker...

If the Parker-Rowbottom-Warner combination has been our strongest over the past two seasons, and two of those are on the right side of 25 while the other is on the wrong side of 30, then it becomes really easy to see where Sheldrick fits into the equation, potentially as soon as next year. He reminds me of a young Parker the way he plays and as we phase one out, we can phase the other in.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
Brilliant analysis! 👏
Are you able to split these stats by timeframes? Given the overall stats still show Parker as our best clearance player, was there any drop off in his numbers, say over the last 6 to 8 games (which were all crunch games)? Would like to see the most successful partnerships over that period.
 
Brilliant analysis! 👏
Are you able to split these stats by timeframes? Given the overall stats still show Parker as our best clearance player, was there any drop off in his numbers, say over the last 6 to 8 games (which were all crunch games)? Would like to see the most successful partnerships over that period.
One factor that will skew results is that Parker had picked up and injury late in the season. So you'll almost certainly see a drop off in Parker's performance.

He was absolutely flying just prior to that. So in Parker's case, it would look like he had a dip in performance when the whips were cracking but injury would have played a non trivial part in that.
 
This is a lengthy post that I didn't want to clog other threads up with, plus it doesn't really pertain to anything about our club except the midfield. So as Paul Roos would say, HERE IT IS!!

I've gone over our complete CBAs from this year to try and find out what often went wrong and who, or what, is to blame. I initially used the AFL app's template for what a "centre clearance" was, but I found they didn't really tell the whole story, as according to AFL or Champion Data or whoever is responsible for recording stats, a handball out of one pack straight into another counts as a "clearance". I believe this is often why we find ourselves looking at games where to the naked eye we've been thumped in clearance work only to read the stats sheet and discover we won that stat on any particular day.

So I came up with my own sort of system, focusing only on centre bounces where the ball was successfully moved from stoppage situation to general play situation. Using this, I gave each centre bounce combination a W (we won the clearance), an L (we lost the clearance) or a D (we drew, as in neither team won an immediate clearance and the ball was thrown up again.) I then distributed points a la the premiership ladder - 1 point for a clearance win, 0.5 points for a drawn stoppage, and no points for a clearance loss. From there it was simply about how many points they 'scored' from their CBAs, to determine their final success rate.

To find out which players, pairings and combinations worked and which ones didn't, I broke them all down into three levels: individuals, duos, and trios.

Most successful individuals based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

1. Angus Sheldrick - 51.67%
2. Chad Warner - 46.13%
3. Luke Parker - 45.24%
4. James Rowbottom - 44.92%
5. Tom Papley - 43.59%
6. Errol Gulden - 41.74%
7. Isaac Heeney - 38.24%
8. Callum Mills - 37.81%

So great news for the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society that is so rampant on this board, right? Well, not exactly... Sheldrick's points are hard to gauge because he only had CBAs in five games, and one of them happened to be the West Coast game, in which the Swans overall won 22(!) centre clearances, so it distorts his overall effectiveness. So I dug a little deeper and found that without the West Coast game, Sheldrick goes from 1st at 51.67% down to 8th at 37.8%. (I repeated this exercise with all of the other mids and none of their percentages changed more either way than 2%.)

I'll also note that even in those centre clearances that we did win in those five games, Sheldrick himself was only equal third in terms of winning the clearances, with five over that period, well behind Rowbottom (11) and Parker (10).

Most successful duos based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
1. Chad Warner & Luke Parker - 49.49%
2. James Rowbottom & Luke Parker - 49.09%
3. Chad Warner & James Rowbottom - 47.06%
4. James Rowbottom & Tom Papley - 46.74%
5. Luke Parker & Tom Papley - 45.07%
6. Errol Gulden & James Rowbottom - 44.9%
7. Callum Mills & Luke Parker - 44.64%
8. Chad Warner & Tom Papley - 42.72%
9. Errol Gulden & Luke Parker - 42.21%
10. James Rowbottom & Callum Mills - 28.92%

Quite obviously there are three names that feature prominently at the top here - that being Parker, Rowbottom & Warner (this will be reinforced later on.)

Perhaps most strikingly is the Mills & Rowbottom number. These two were instrumental in our grand final run last year. They were in our top 3 players in the last few months of 2022 by almost every measure imaginable - Skilton Medal votes, AFLCA coaches votes, player ratings points, even POTY votes on this very board. Our midfield was hardly a triumph last year, but if we want a reason for our midfield going backwards this year, we need look no further than these two becoming our least effective centre bounce pairing.

Out of interest I also wondered how the two fan favourites - Gulden & Warner - faired when paired up at centre bounces, and the result was... underwhelming. At 42.47% they'd just sneak into 9th place if they'd featured together enough this year.

And, for anyone in the Angus Sheldrick Appreciation Society wondering who their Chosen One worked best with, the answer is a resounding Tom Papley, who he was paired up with seven times for seven centre clearance wins (yes, that's a strike rate of 100%, for the mathematically challenged. I'm not judging.) Next-best for Sheldrick were Gulden (60%) and Rowbottom (58.4%).

Most successful combinations based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):
(There were obviously a s**t load of combinations throughout the year, including random ones like McInerney, Wicks, Stephens & Roberts all popping in for literally less than five CBAs each all year. So below are only the ten most-used combinations we went with this year, ranked from best to worst.)

1. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (59.23%)
2. Callum Mills, Chad Warner & Luke Parker (59.09%)
3. James Rowbottom, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (55.13%)
4. Chad Warner, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (53.13%)
5. Chad Warner, James Rowbottom & Tom Papley (51.92%)
-----
6. Errol Gulden, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (46.36%)
7. Callum Mills, Errol Gulden & Luke Parker (46.15%)
8. Chad Warner, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (46.08%)
9. Callum Mills, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker (42.68%)
10. Errol Gulden, Luke Parker & Tom Papley (39.66%)

First of all, it says a lot about how much we used Luke Parker this year that he features in nine of our ten most-used centre bounce combinations. (20% more than our next mid.)

Second, looks like I have some egg on my face. Three of my gripes all year were with each of Warner, Rowbottom & Parker in the midfield. Warner because I thought he was better suited to the outside, Rowbottom because I thought he was too defensive, and Parker because... well I won't go into that again. Evidently they were getting it done. If not to the level that say a Petracca/Oliver/Viney can get it done, still more so than the rest we've got.

It's also interesting that that trio were number one last year as well, though with a much higher percentage of 72.7%.

Some other less-used combinations that I thought had interesting results:

- Isaac Heeney, James Rowbottom & Luke Parker was our most successful combination of the year, going at 91.67%. Interestingly this trio was also our most successful combination in last year's grand final, being the only ones to produce a strike rate above 50% all game.

- Our three youngest mids (of our main rotation, so excluding Sheldrick, Roberts etc.) in Rowbottom, Warner & Gulden had a positive strike rate of 52.63%.

- Last year's top 3 in the B&F in Mills, Warner & Rowbottom went from a strike rate of 57.1% last year to 40% this year, which would've had them second-lowest if they were featured more. Once again, when you compare to last year it really isn't hard to see why the midfield got worse this season.

- Justin McInerney also appeared in four centre bounces this year for four losses.

Most successful first-touch midfielders based on CPPCBA (Caesar points per CBA):

All of the above was hard to interpret because there were a lot of centre bounces where players didn't even touch the ball but still got points for being at a centre bounce that proved successful. So I wanted to look a bit more into who was actually contributing most to these successful centre bounces, meaning who had hands on ball the most at these centre bounces.

Using handball receives wasn't a good indicator as a lot of the time the ball went to wingmen or running half backs pushing up, which rendered the starting mids redundant. So I looked at the mids getting first touch on the ball, be it winning a ground ball or roving a ruck's taps.

This is based on % of an individual's CBAs where they won first touch that initiated a successful clearance. It does NOT include first touches that failed to lead to a successful clearance.

1. James Rowbottom (31.9%)
2. Errol Gulden (26.72%)
3. Tom Papley (25.84%)
4. Luke Parker (23%)
5. Chad Warner (18.77%)
6. Isaac Heeney (18.58%)
7. Angus Sheldrick (18.5%)
8. Callum Mills (14.3%)

These both did and didn't surprise me. On the one hand I've always felt like Rowbottom was very good at reading ruck taps and knowing where the ball was going, but it also felt like too often he wasn't even going for the ball. Gulden doing so well in this area also suggests you don't need to be a big-bodied bull to be an effective first-touch midfielder.

At the other end of the spectrum... Mills... brother... I've defended you all year and said you needed to be in the midfield more, and this is how you repay me? In his defence, he was in heavily defensive roles in the second half of the year and similarly to Rowbottom, looked more preoccupied putting body on an opponent than going for the ball a lot. But even then, he was doing this last year and still effectively feeding the ball out. I don't want this post to be a Mills-bashing thing, because I love him and he's a great player. It's just hard not to feel that his lack of impact this year translated to a lack of impact from our midfield overall.

My thoughts:

Have tried to be objective doing this, and all of the above is just data, not my personal belief (for example I am still a massive believer in what the Mills & Rowbottom partnership can be despite the evidence suggesting they stunk it up as a duo this year.)

It's also always going to be a bit murky. All of the above doesn't include centre bounces where free kicks were paid for ruck infringements, or where the ruckman won the ball and cleared it out himself, as in those cases the midfielders played no part in it. But there are other areas it can still be murky. A brilliant play can be undone by one great opposition smother that turns the ball over, or a few of our mids could've done everything right and then one of the others gives away a silly free. So there's a lot of variables that don't make it plain black and white. But I hope all of the above does help illuminate things somewhat.

The below are just my thoughts:

For all the talk of how badly we need a ruck, watching these centre bounces back one after the other really clarifies the things our midfielders do poorly, and I'm not sure a ruckman will make much of a difference until we fix those things our midfielders do:

  • Overrunning the ball (either to win it on the ground or for handball receives)
  • Fumble and double-grab a lot of balls (thus putting ourselves under more pressure)
  • Turn back into traffic / handball back into traffic (thus allowing ourselves to get tackled)
  • Fail to get our arms free in tackles (leading to dead balls and repeat stoppages)

One area where I think a ruckman could make a big difference is how we position and set up. Our mids run back behind the ball almost all the time, as if they're expecting the clearance loss and are getting ready to push back to defence. It means that when we DO win the clearance, we rarely have the players ahead of the ball, meaning so many of our clearances are won out the back of the pack. Going backwards to go forwards means you're not always gaining maximum territory, and a lot of our clearances land around about the 50-60m half forward mark, which is how defences that push up high like Geelong's have killed us again and again. Perhaps a ruck acquisition such as Grundy will give our mids the confidence to hold their ground and maybe even move into some attacking positions, so we can get more clearances out the front of packs.

I think this will be for the coaches to sort out. As for the players...

Watching the clearances all back one after the other makes it so much easier to notice each player's game and particularly the things they get wrong at centre bounces. Each have one particularly glaring flaw that seemed to cause them grief repeatedly.

Gulden - Tries to get onto his preferred kicking foot when the time or space to do so isn't there.
Mills - Frustratingly it's simple skill errors for him. Handballs missing targets, fumbling ground balls etc.
Papley - Tries to be too cute with little taps and stuff when simply taking possession is needed.
Parker - Just can't get the isolation on his opponents that the others can, though this is hardly groundbreaking.
Rowbottom - Too defensive too often, though again, hardly groundbreaking.
Warner - Tries to do too much which gets himself under more pressure.

And finally, Parker...

If the Parker-Rowbottom-Warner combination has been our strongest over the past two seasons, and two of those are on the right side of 25 while the other is on the wrong side of 30, then it becomes really easy to see where Sheldrick fits into the equation, potentially as soon as next year. He reminds me of a young Parker the way he plays and as we phase one out, we can phase the other in.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
AWESOME :clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping:
 
Great analytics. I think the biggest issue is our defensive setup as you mentioned. The problem is not only do we set up to lose the ball, but the way in which we do it isn't even conducive to stopping the oppo or winning the ball back. That's what I found most concerning, it's the one thing we weren't great at that never seemed to change as the year went on. Surely there should have been a point where the coaching group thought to change something up in the defensive setup.

I know it was only WC but what that game showed was how devastating our around the ground setup and game plan can be when the mids are given a chance to dominate. If we can turn that part of our game around we would be close to untouchable. Throws the desperation of KPPs out the window, fix the middle! It's our one and only glaring weakness.
 
Well done caesar88 thanks for spending the time researching our CB clearances.

Was very interesting data and you analysed and explained it well.

Having watched so many centre bounces, you may recall you may not but where teams got a run on us, example Adelaide last quarter, Melbourne last quarter (1st game), GWS (1st game), Essendon last quarter, Collingwood last quarter, Brisbane after half time.

What if anything did you notice that was set up differently? Or did they just execute better? Was our ruckman being dominated also which may help with a Grundy arriving?
 
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Thanks folks! Glad it was worth the effort then as for some time doing it I was thinking, "Is anyone else but me going to find this interesting?" :p

Regarding questions (that I don't really have answers to)...

Millky95 & Kiama Chris - Mills basically didn't have a pre-season because of that achilles issue, I think he returned to training late Jan/early February, and he didn't participate in any of the practice games. So it was already a not-ideal preparation for him going into this season. Two months in he gets that calf injury against Freo and is out for another month and a half. He was also wearing a glove on his hand for a handful of games there. My guess is his ability to train throughout the season would've been severely impacted so his form just never really reached the level we know he's capable of.

GoTheSwannies - Horse in his thank you to members mentioned Rowbottom (alongside Gulden, Blakey & McDonald) as having been improvers of our youngsters this year. It nearly floored me, as to my eye it was the least impressed I've been with him since he was drafted. But it also checks out with the fact that he is doing a role and it's a pretty thankless one. Back in the pre-season I heard from a reliable source at the club that according to the coaches, Rowbottom is our "most important mid" (their exact words.) It makes me think he must be offering something that we'd really, really struggle without, and that has to be his defensive pressure, which is important to our turnover game, which is important because we struggle with the clearance game. Hopefully if the latter improves, the need for Rowbottom to be so defensive will dissipate, as I really do think he is so much better than what we saw this year.

As for the number of CBA combinations, in the pairs and trios sections, all were the top-ten most-used combinations, for the specific reason you mentioned (that combinations with smaller samples lead to distorted figures.) For the individuals, I only used the eight players on our list who had double-digit CBAs, as the rest simply didn't have enough to produce meaningful results.

Swannie0307 - Unfortunately I didn't record the results based on a time-frame, only cumulative over the course of the season, so I don't know what the results were specifically from the last 6-8 weeks. But I think it's worth considering that Parker wasn't our only mid who would've been dealing with injuries. We know that at various points throughout the season, Mills, Warner and Rowbottom were all dealing with fitness issues where they didn't quite look right (the former two actually missed games because of it.) So it probably evens out when looking at each of their seasons as a whole.

ErrolisGoldun - Yeah I was actually keeping a close eye on when I knew teams got a run on against us, to see if the midfield did anything differently in those situations, and from what I could gather, they did not. They lost the clearances the same way they did in other stages of the game, just consecutively in more of a pile-on kind of way.
 

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Thanks folks! Glad it was worth the effort then as for some time doing it I was thinking, "Is anyone else but me going to find this interesting?" :p

Regarding questions (that I don't really have answers to)...

Millky95 & Kiama Chris - Mills basically didn't have a pre-season because of that achilles issue, I think he returned to training late Jan/early February, and he didn't participate in any of the practice games. So it was already a not-ideal preparation for him going into this season. Two months in he gets that calf injury against Freo and is out for another month and a half. He was also wearing a glove on his hand for a handful of games there. My guess is his ability to train throughout the season would've been severely impacted so his form just never really reached the level we know he's capable of.

GoTheSwannies - Horse in his thank you to members mentioned Rowbottom (alongside Gulden, Blakey & McDonald) as having been improvers of our youngsters this year. It nearly floored me, as to my eye it was the least impressed I've been with him since he was drafted. But it also checks out with the fact that he is doing a role and it's a pretty thankless one. Back in the pre-season I heard from a reliable source at the club that according to the coaches, Rowbottom is our "most important mid" (their exact words.) It makes me think he must be offering something that we'd really, really struggle without, and that has to be his defensive pressure, which is important to our turnover game, which is important because we struggle with the clearance game. Hopefully if the latter improves, the need for Rowbottom to be so defensive will dissipate, as I really do think he is so much better than what we saw this year.

As for the number of CBA combinations, in the pairs and trios sections, all were the top-ten most-used combinations, for the specific reason you mentioned (that combinations with smaller samples lead to distorted figures.) For the individuals, I only used the eight players on our list who had double-digit CBAs, as the rest simply didn't have enough to produce meaningful results.

Swannie0307 - Unfortunately I didn't record the results based on a time-frame, only cumulative over the course of the season, so I don't know what the results were specifically from the last 6-8 weeks. But I think it's worth considering that Parker wasn't our only mid who would've been dealing with injuries. We know that at various points throughout the season, Mills, Warner and Rowbottom were all dealing with fitness issues where they didn't quite look right (the former two actually missed games because of it.) So it probably evens out when looking at each of their seasons as a whole.

ErrolisGoldun - Yeah I was actually keeping a close eye on when I knew teams got a run on against us, to see if the midfield did anything differently in those situations, and from what I could gather, they did not. They lost the clearances the same way they did in other stages of the game, just consecutively in more of a pile-on kind of way.
Thanks for the follow-up.
It's unwise for the coaches to be honest about some of this stuff as it happens because we have to keep the opposition in the dark.
Hope we can get Millsy right and I'd love to see Rowbottom playing the way he did in the NEAFL.
If you can find it, check out his 70m goal!
 
@Ceasar88, I was looking into CBA's and found this interesting article that may shed light on our team's philosophy to winning clearances. *noting the article is from 2020, so the data is outdated (covering from 2018 to ~July 2020), but the trends are likely to be similar today.


The key takeaways:
  • There isn't a strong relationship between a team's clearance differential to the final margin of the game (other factors contribute to the outcome of a game).
    • Over the time period analysed, the side with more clearances went on to win about 58% of the time.
  • Stoppage points from clearances differential has a stronger linear relationship than clearance differential.
    • 74% of teams who won this stat also won the game.
  • If you can score more freely from your clearances than you allow your opponent to do from theirs, that matters more than the raw number of how many you win.
  • From 2018-July 2020, 37% of points scored came from stoppages, 59% came from intercepts.

Clearance differential - not a strong relationship
1695290704094.png

Stoppage points per clearance differential - much stronger linear relationship
1695290781182.png

So I guess while clearances are not the be all and end all, it's the balance between being able to generate scores from your clearances while restricting your opponent from doing so. The other factor is that if you can score off intercepts / turnovers clearances aren't as important.

One thing that was clear in 2023 is that when our opponents got going, there were prolonged periods where we couldn't halt their momentum. And when we were on top, we either failed to capitalise due to inaccuracy in front of goal, or we failed to use the ball effectively and didn't generate enough scores.
 
@Ceasar88, I was looking into CBA's and found this interesting article that may shed light on our team's philosophy to winning clearances. *noting the article is from 2020, so the data is outdated (covering from 2018 to ~July 2020), but the trends are likely to be similar today.


The key takeaways:
  • There isn't a strong relationship between a team's clearance differential to the final margin of the game (other factors contribute to the outcome of a game).
    • Over the time period analysed, the side with more clearances went on to win about 58% of the time.
  • Stoppage points from clearances differential has a stronger linear relationship than clearance differential.
    • 74% of teams who won this stat also won the game.
  • If you can score more freely from your clearances than you allow your opponent to do from theirs, that matters more than the raw number of how many you win.
  • From 2018-July 2020, 37% of points scored came from stoppages, 59% came from intercepts.

Clearance differential - not a strong relationship
View attachment 1809773

Stoppage points per clearance differential - much stronger linear relationship
View attachment 1809775

So I guess while clearances are not the be all and end all, it's the balance between being able to generate scores from your clearances while restricting your opponent from doing so. The other factor is that if you can score off intercepts / turnovers clearances aren't as important.

One thing that was clear in 2023 is that when our opponents got going, there were prolonged periods where we couldn't halt their momentum. And when we were on top, we either failed to capitalise due to inaccuracy in front of goal, or we failed to use the ball effectively and didn't generate enough scores.
I suppose the difference here is that caesar88's analysis was based solely around centre bounce clearances whereas the article you're referring to is for any clearance, whether that be centre, forward or back. With the 6,6,6 rule, I feel winning a centre bounce clearance is more important than any other and, to be honest, we have been slaughtered there.
Surprising also that in caesar88's analysis, it shows Parker as being the lynchpin in our most successful clearance groups yet most on the board suggest we should jettison him off to the forward line.
 
I suppose the difference here is that caesar88's analysis was based solely around centre bounce clearances whereas the article you're referring to is for any clearance, whether that be centre, forward or back. With the 6,6,6 rule, I feel winning a centre bounce clearance is more important than any other and, to be honest, we have been slaughtered there.
Surprising also that in caesar88's analysis, it shows Parker as being the lynchpin in our most successful clearance groups yet most on the board suggest we should jettison him off to the forward line.
Agree with both of your points. CBAs are critical to a team's momentum (e.g. the ability to win continual centre clearances and keeping the pressure on your opposition, or winning the clearance to halt your opponent from being able to score consecutive goals).

Also agree 100% with your views on Parker. People get on Parker's case for hack kicking it out of congestion or not being able to pin-point a pass out of the midfield with a couple of opponents hanging off his back. Parker has almost single-handedly played the role of enforcer in the midfield since JPK retired. It's not the most glamorous role. And not one that will feature heavily on a highlight reel but he certainly makes his opponent earn their possessions. Without him our midfield would get bullied by the better midfields in the comp. He's often an unsung hero and usually gets blamed when our midfield gets slaughtered, but often I don't think he's the problem. Just the one left holding the bags when everything goes to shit.
 
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I've noticed that you haven't been making any posts on the "trade & recruiting thread" for the past week or so. Now I know why.
You must have taken over a week to compile this post alone.
Fantastic analysis. Well done #caesar88.
Cheers mate. I'd been working on it on and off for well over a month. I'm mainly not posting in the draft & trade thread because it can get quite heated and I just don't have that in me atm. Reading everyone else's thoughts will do me for now!
 
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@Ceasar88, I was looking into CBA's and found this interesting article that may shed light on our team's philosophy to winning clearances. *noting the article is from 2020, so the data is outdated (covering from 2018 to ~July 2020), but the trends are likely to be similar today.


The key takeaways:
  • There isn't a strong relationship between a team's clearance differential to the final margin of the game (other factors contribute to the outcome of a game).
    • Over the time period analysed, the side with more clearances went on to win about 58% of the time.
  • Stoppage points from clearances differential has a stronger linear relationship than clearance differential.
    • 74% of teams who won this stat also won the game.
  • If you can score more freely from your clearances than you allow your opponent to do from theirs, that matters more than the raw number of how many you win.
  • From 2018-July 2020, 37% of points scored came from stoppages, 59% came from intercepts.

Clearance differential - not a strong relationship
View attachment 1809773

Stoppage points per clearance differential - much stronger linear relationship
View attachment 1809775

So I guess while clearances are not the be all and end all, it's the balance between being able to generate scores from your clearances while restricting your opponent from doing so. The other factor is that if you can score off intercepts / turnovers clearances aren't as important.

One thing that was clear in 2023 is that when our opponents got going, there were prolonged periods where we couldn't halt their momentum. And when we were on top, we either failed to capitalise due to inaccuracy in front of goal, or we failed to use the ball effectively and didn't generate enough scores.
Apologies, I meant to reply to this last night and blanked.

The vibe I get from that is that it's really about quality over quantity, in that you don't need to dominate clearances if the clearances you DO win count for something. I used to always see that with Richmond. They were renowned for not being a dominant clearance team but I never quite saw it that way. They didn't build their game around it, but when they won one, it was almost always to Martin or Prestia charging out the front of packs and getting their forward half game going. Efficiency over prolificacy. So I never thought they were as bad at clearances as the media made them out to be.

That was sorta what led me to want to look at our clearances this year and define a "clearance" differently, less as just one single possession that the AFL app records as a 'clearance' and more as an actual play, that could involve multiple possessions or players.

FWIW the one 'clearance' that seemed to stand out to me that we were quite successful at was a mid - typically a Rowbottom or a Parker - roving the ruck tap, and then handballing it to one of the runners - typically a Gulden or a Papley - out the back. It was the kind of clearance I noticed seemed to look cleanest and most replicable over the course of a game as opposed to a lot of our others that seemed scrappy and hard-fought. But it still wasn't without fault. As I mentioned in an above post, if we can replicate that exact clearance model more often, but with the runner forward of the ball, rather than behind it, the ball can be fed out the front of packs and gain us more territory, as even when a Gulden or Papley was getting the ball, they were banging it forward and it was only landing around that 50m zone, when ideally what we want is to get it deeper into our forward line.
 
Apologies, I meant to reply to this last night and blanked.

The vibe I get from that is that it's really about quality over quantity, in that you don't need to dominate clearances if the clearances you DO win count for something. I used to always see that with Richmond. They were renowned for not being a dominant clearance team but I never quite saw it that way. They didn't build their game around it, but when they won one, it was almost always to Martin or Prestia charging out the front of packs and getting their forward half game going. Efficiency over prolificacy. So I never thought they were as bad at clearances as the media made them out to be.

That was sorta what led me to want to look at our clearances this year and define a "clearance" differently, less as just one single possession that the AFL app records as a 'clearance' and more as an actual play, that could involve multiple possessions or players.

FWIW the one 'clearance' that seemed to stand out to me that we were quite successful at was a mid - typically a Rowbottom or a Parker - roving the ruck tap, and then handballing it to one of the runners - typically a Gulden or a Papley - out the back. It was the kind of clearance I noticed seemed to look cleanest and most replicable over the course of a game as opposed to a lot of our others that seemed scrappy and hard-fought. But it still wasn't without fault. As I mentioned in an above post, if we can replicate that exact clearance model more often, but with the runner forward of the ball, rather than behind it, the ball can be fed out the front of packs and gain us more territory, as even when a Gulden or Papley was getting the ball, they were banging it forward and it was only landing around that 50m zone, when ideally what we want is to get it deeper into our forward line.
One of the most pleasing things to see is a player running straight through, collecting the ball and either kicking a goal from 50 out or spotting up a froward with a nice delivery.

Did you notice many of those types of centre clearances, where it was a clean win and a quick transition into the F50 or a goal?

I know you were focused on clearance wins, but did you notice what may have gone wrong when our opponent won the ball too easily, or when the opposition won consecutive centre clearances? All good if you didn't notice that aspect, just figured you may have noticed a pattern even though it wasn't your focus.
 
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One of the most pleasing things to see is a player running straight through, collecting the ball and either kicking a goal from 50 out or spotting up a froward with a nice delivery.

Did you notice many of those types of centre clearances, where it was a clean win and a quick transition into the F50 or a goal?

I know you were focused on clearance wins, but did you notice what may have gone wrong when our opponent won the ball too easily, or when the opposition won consecutive centre clearances? All good if you didn't notice that aspect, just figured you may have noticed a pattern even though it wasn't your focus.
I honestly can't remember any of those clearances you speak of where a player ran straight out of the centre. But to be fair, I didn't notice any for the opposition either. And in neutral games I can't say I've seen many. It is great to watch I agree, but not that common.

The most frequent clearances we conceded to my eye seemed to be just two of our players getting sucked in to the contest so when the ball spilt out, the opposition had a free man and fed it out by hand.

Again though, I feel like that's because of the way we set up to defend the ball, by trying to swarm the opposition ball-winner. It's effective when it produces the turnover but when it spills out to opposition hands it always leaves us outnumbered.

If the exercise did anything for me, it's make me hopeful that even just the IDEA of a strong ruck such as Grundy will help our midfield become more confident and attacking, even if he himself doesn't perform to the hype.
 
I honestly can't remember any of those clearances you speak of where a player ran straight out of the centre. But to be fair, I didn't notice any for the opposition either. And in neutral games I can't say I've seen many. It is great to watch I agree, but not that common.

The most frequent clearances we conceded to my eye seemed to be just be two of our players getting sucked in to the contest so when the ball spilt out, the opposition had a free man and fed it out by hand.

Again though, I feel like that's because of the way we set up to defend the ball, by trying to swarm the opposition ball-winner. It's effective when it produces the turnover but when it spills out to opposition hands it always leaves us outnumbered.

If the exercise did anything for me, it's make me hopeful that even just the IDEA of a strong ruck such as Grundy will help our midfield become more confident and attacking, even if he himself doesn't perform to the hype.
Yeah, the part I bolded is what I think of when I think of our losing CBs, the mids collapsing in and failing to prevent the ball being handballed out to a runner on the outside.

And agree with the part about Grundy. I feel like we've tried to put together an attacking midfield but haven't had a ruckman to take advantage of it (no disrespect to Hickey, he was just at the end of his career). So rather than attackers playing to their natural instincts, they've had to defend more than they'd like. But with a solid ruckman, there should be more opportunities for our attacking mids to get the ball moving our way. Rather than trying to defend and then rely on our HBs to launch our attacks from defence.

Perhaps next year we'll start seeing Warner and Gulden streaming out of the centre with ball in hand and the opposition lying in their wake.
 
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Once again caesar88 , legendary analysis! 👏
If you have another spare 10 days or so (haha), I would love to see the player %’s for clearances not intercepted by the opposition? I reckon possession retaining clearances, or at least to advantage, probably correlate to a team winning far more than ‘all clearances’.
 
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Once again caesar88 , legendary analysis! 👏
If you have another spare 10 days or so (haha), I would love to see the player %’s for clearances not intercepted by the opposition? I reckon possession retaining clearances, or at least to advantage, probably correlate to a team winning far more than ‘all clearances’.
Ooooof. I reckon it'd take me longer than 10 days :p

FWIW I think the % you're looking for would probably be somewhat similar to the individual figures I listed in the OP. They were based on first possessions that initiated successful clearances. I deliberately didn't include first possessions that were fumbled, turned over, trapped in or intercepted as they didn't lead to meaningful clearances or any clearance at all.
 

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